Wendigo - In Progress

Started playing with trees at nighttime, after I went out for a night hike and got inspired. Its not finished but I like what I'm trying to capture. Will probably change a lot though before its done.



My and my boyfriend where hiking to the bottom of a ravine, and as we neared the river I got this foreboding feeling of something unsettling being nearby. I had mental images pass through my mind, like of a shape streaking out of the dark to attack us. I reasoned to myself, "If anything is out here, it would only be a coyote, and I can deal with that." and then a darker thought crept into my kind "What if it was a person, running at us?" That freaked me out, because the woods where I live aren't exactly safe (people do get robbed and sexually assaulted). A person could be incredibly dangerous.

But nonetheless, visibility was reasonable due to the clear sky and bright moon, so I placed my child-like fears aside and continued to enjoy the night. As my boyfriend and I stood by the river watching the water run by, the crystal silence was shattered by the sound of something large and heavy dropping into the water, with a big KER-PLUNK-SPLASH that usually only a large rock being tossed in would make. I asked my boyfriend "Was that you?" and he said, "No, my hands are in my pockets... you didn't do it?"
"No."
I fumbled for my flash light, which was in my pack, and shone around. Nothing.
Neither of us could think of a rational explanation for the sound, and we both joked that it "... must have been a squash!(TM)" (as is Sasquatch) . But after that bad feeling and then the noise happening that neither of us could explain, I wanted to go back out of the ravine. It was just too uncanny. It could have been some wacko playing with is, tossing a rock into the water to see us jump and then hiding.
On the hike back out, we heard Eastern Screech owls calling to each other, so we stopped on the steep ravine hillside to listen. We spent the remainder of our time in the woods looking over our shoulders and occasionally scanning the woods with our flashlights, but we saw an heard nothing; only the gentle murmuring of screech owls in the night.